


Enochian Script

by Aaron_The_8th_Demon



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Brief mention of self-harm, Happy and sad things are both to be found in this fic, Mostly Canon Compliant, Multi, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-17 20:29:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29598330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aaron_The_8th_Demon/pseuds/Aaron_The_8th_Demon
Summary: Blue words mean your soulmate hasn't been born yet; gold words are for platonic soulmates; silver words are for romantic soulmates; if your words turn clear until you almost can't see them, your soulmate has died.Sam's "words" are depicted in ASL signs.Claire finds her words comforting as her family falls apart piece by piece.Castiel isn't supposed to have words at all and assumes his vessels are glitching.Dean's words are some language nobody's ever seen before.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester, Kaia Nieves/Claire Novak
Comments: 26
Kudos: 80





	Enochian Script

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is fairly hopeful and even-tempered until it's not - if you don't want the sad parts, don't read the last two sections from Dean's and Cas' POVs. I was going to make this a happy fic all around but then I figured out that I'm seriously displaying symptoms of psychosis and apparently have been for years, which freaks me out just a _tiny_ bit and so after that there was no way it was going to end well for the busted-up angel and the cranky hunter. Sorry guys :(

Everyone learns about it before they can talk. Every so often a person is born without them, but even those kids learn. Sometimes it’s a challenge against fate -  _ I will resist, because I want to choose for myself. _ Sometimes it’s comforting -  _ I know there’s a person out there just for me. _ Sometimes it’s confusing -  _ why are my words this way? _ Sometimes it’s anxiety-invoking -  _ what if my words are wrong? _

There are rules about this stuff, not rules that people made up but more like the laws of physics: it works this way because this is the way it works, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

The first rule is that nobody, anywhere, has the same set of words. You have three words listed in the primary language of your soulmate, and these words describe something to do with them. It’s usually personality or appearance related but sometimes it’s about the circumstances how you meet them, or an event that comes to pass that makes you realize “yes, this is the one for me.”

The second rule is that not everyone has the same number of sets. Sometimes people have no words at all. Sometimes people have more than one set. About 75% of people have one set.

The third rule is the most complicated - the color of the words is important, it indicates just as much as what the words actually say. Bright blue words mean your soulmate isn’t born yet. Silver means they’re a romantic soulmate, which is the most common. Gold means they’re a platonic soulmate. If they turn clear until you almost can’t see them at all anymore, it means your soulmate has died.

* * *

Sam resisted, in the beginning.

Nobody could even tell him what his were supposed to say at first, because they weren’t words, they were  _ pictures. _ Pictures of hands making funny shapes. It wasn’t until third grade (the second school he went to for that grade, because Dad moved them again) when he had a friend whose brother was deaf that he found out what they said.

_ “It’s sign language,” Susie told him. “I can read it for you if you want.” _

_ “Okay,” Sam agreed, nodding. _

_ “The first one says HUNT.” _

_ Sam groaned. “That’s stupid! I don’t wanna marry another hunter!” _

_ “Do you wanna know the other two?” _

_ “Yeah I guess.” _

_ “Um…” She frowned really hard at his arm. “I don’t know what the middle one is, I never seen that word before. But the one at the bottom says THANK YOU.” _

And Sam resisted. It wasn’t really that hard for him to do it, because he didn’t go hunting much with Dean and Dad until he got bigger, and he never knew any hunters who were deaf. And then he ran away and went to college, and he met Jess, who didn’t have words at all. It was perfect, it made sense. If he was going to give the finger to fate he could totally do that by being with her, because she didn’t have a fate at all.

Then Dean showed up.

Then Jess died.

Then things kept happening, and happening, and happening. And most of the time he forgot to keep resisting. It’s not like there was anyone for him anyway, not really. He resisted again when Dean and Cas vanished in the explosion, because after that he met Amelia. But then Dean came back, and things were happening all over again.

So when he finally met Eileen, Sam forgot to keep resisting.

And everything became clear in the wake of Chuck, of the rip that had souls fleeing from Hell. Because Eileen found Sam again and he did everything he could to help her. And when she got out of the spell-bath and came to him wrapped in a fluffy towel, she grabbed his wrist because his sleeves were rolled to his elbows. On her forearm:  **HEIGHT, RESEARCH, SPELL.** And his reappeared too, just now, even though he barely noticed they’d turned clear until just now that they were back again. She read the middle word for him that his friend didn’t know all those years back:  **RESURRECT.**

* * *

Claire is always comforted by her words, ever since the day when she’s in middle school and Dad just  _ leaves. _ He leaves, and he comes back a year later but then they find out that angels and demons are totally a thing apparently and these two big weird guys stab people right in their living room and-

It’s just too much, all at once. Because that stupid angel steals him again from her and her mom, and then Mom leaves too, and then Grandma dies, and-

Her life  _ sucks. _

Claire’s stuck in a group home for awhile. She looks at her words all the time:  **DREAMS, SCARS, WORLDS.** Somewhere out there, there’s someone waiting for her, someone who won’t leave like her parents did. Claire holds onto that, it’s her lifeline for years, especially when she figures out that the stupid body-snatching angel isn’t listening and gives up praying to him for good.

And then stuff starts happening again. She’s locked up in the group home and they say her father’s here to see her, but the second he steps in the room she  _ knows _ it isn’t him. It’s frigging Castiel, of  _ course _ it’s Castiel, she just wants to punch him in his stupid angel face and never ever  _ ever _ see him again. But then he breaks her out of the group home and stops her from helping Randy and he shows up to find her in the hospital when she’s looking for her mom and then there’s other angels who are apparently eating people’s life essence or whatever and-

She just wants him away from her. And she ends up in Sioux Falls with Jody Mills. And Claire doesn’t see Castiel again, but he calls her every so often to ask if she’s okay. And Claire learns to become a hunter. Even when she’s home with Jody and Alex she feels isolated, and she knows college isn’t for her no matter what Jody keeps saying.

Out on a hunt, she gets a call from home: Sam and Dean are in trouble. So she goes to help. And that’s how she meets Kaia. They sit, they talk about their scars. Claire accidentally shows Kaia the words on her arm, and then she reads Kaia’s too except it’s not on accident:  **LONELY, SWORD, WEREWOLF.**

So Claire explains about her parents, and shows Kaia her angel sword, and tells the story about the time she was a werewolf. And they grin and look at each other and both of them think  _ yes, this is the one for me. _

* * *

Castiel is not well-versed in the dynamics of human soulmates.

Were he interested in finding out, he could ask a cherub, but he doesn’t care to know the specifics because it’s completely irrelevant to his function. He briefly makes note of a strange occurrence when taking a vessel on his mission with the garrison to punish Akobel for fathering a nephilim, his vessel is in possession of the typical set of three words on her arm prior to allowing him entrance. When consent has been given, the words change from their original form - not only do they shift from silver to blue, but they read an entirely different message to now spell  **GREEN, HELL, LOVE.**

It shouldn’t technically be possible for those words to have changed. Castiel pays it little mind, however, and surmises that he’s caused a glitch in the functioning of his vessel. And this theory is even proven correct when he extricates himself after the mission and his former vessel’s word set is returned to its prior state.

For over a century, Castiel completely forgets this even occurred.

The order comes to his garrison to rescue the Righteous Man from the Pit. Castiel prepares his warriors, they take vessels, and after a period of communication and rigorous testing he attains consent from James Novak, a man eager to serve God so long as his family are protected. Castiel promises their safety and assigns one of his garrison to watch over the woman and child until such time as he’s returned from Hell and his mission.

And on his possession of Jimmy, it happens again. Although, this time the words nearly vanish altogether. They read the same as they did back then,  **GREEN** and  **HELL** and  **LOVE,** but they’re much more difficult to read due to a lack of pigment. As before, he elects not to waste time thinking about an inconsequential hiccup regarding his borrowed flesh and proceeds with his task of raising the soul of the Righteous Man from the depths of Hell. In the midst of this, his garrison learns that Lilith is attempting to break the first Seal, which explains God’s insistence on the rescue of this one particular damned human.

And Castiel follows his orders to the letter. They’re too late to prevent the breaking of the Seal, but the mission stands, and ultimately Dean Winchester is saved.

And Castiel stays.

He retains his vessel, as it proves necessary for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which is convincing the Righteous Man to follow Heaven’s plans (which has admittedly mixed levels of success). But even in a relatively short time of knowing each other, Castiel’s discipline begins to unravel so rapidly that by the time he realizes it it’s already almost fully undone. Heaven punishes him for his sins but in short order he stands once again on the precipice of disobedience. And this time, he slips fully over the edge. Because in the holding cell where Zachariah has placed them, Dean forces Castiel to make eye contact. And he sees, immediately, that Dean is so desperate because he loves his brother.

And it falls into place. There is no glitch. Those words, which notably turned silver when Dean was resurrected, belong to Castiel. And Castiel belongs to Dean. This realization culminates in Castiel fully rebelling against Heaven… for the first of many times, as it later turns out.

Castiel rejects Heaven time and time again over the years for Dean’s sake, and by extension Sam’s because Sam’s survival is integral to Dean’s and vise-versa. He never mentions the set of words to Dean because he’s an angel and he isn’t even supposed to have them in the first place - they’re intended to identify a soulmate, but Castiel has never had a soul. All he can do is feel perplexed as he maintains his silence.

Then, Lucifer stabs him.

And Castiel is thrown into the Empty.

The Shadow torments him when he’s woken from his eternal slumber, and one of its means to do so is by reminding him of his words. He should’ve told Dean when he had the chance.

* * *

Dean got nervous a lot when he was a kid anytime someone brought up their stupid soul-words, for three reasons. Number one, his dad’s turned clear when his mom died. Number two, his brother’s are pictures of hands, because apparently people talk like that somehow, but nobody knows what Sammy’s say because everyone they know talks with their mouths instead. And number three, his own words are… different. Like. A  _ lot _ different.

Dad’s words, back when Mom was alive, were silver and in English. Sammy’s are silver too, and in hand-speak, which is apparently a thing. But Dean’s are these funny looking scribbles, some language that nobody even recognizes or ever saw before until he showed them his arm. And they’re not silver or gold or blue or clear, they’re red. The same color red as a fire truck.

When he’s fifteen he asks Bobby about it, because Bobby’s got all the books about everything, and Bobby comes through like always with an answer in less than an hour. There’s two ways to have a set of words in red like Dean’s: if his person sold their soul to a demon in a crossroads deal, because then their soul doesn’t belong to them anymore, or if his person somehow doesn’t have a soul at all. Both of those options scare the shit out of him.

They stay red, no matter how much he stares at them and wishes they’d turn silver. They’re still red when he drags Sammy kicking and screaming away from Stamford for a case. They’re still red when he wakes up in the hospital right before Dad dies. They’re still red after he sells his soul for Sam’s life (which is super fucking ironic, now he thinks about it). They’re still red the morning of his last day before the hellhound comes for him and guts him on the floor of someone’s dining room.

They’re still red when he climbs out of his own grave, and when he almost gets killed by Alastair, and when Cas rescues him from the beautiful room. They’re still red when Famine taunts him in that empty Biggerson’s, and when Crowley “helps” them take down Pestilence, and when Sam drags Lucifer and Adam and Michael into the Cage.

And for the first time in years, someone asks him what they say - Lisa is curious about his words. Her words turned clear when she was twelve, so she never even met the person she was meant for. And all Dean can say when she brings it up is that he has no fucking idea.

It happens on a case that Dean finally learns what god damn language they even are, as he’s drinking whiskey and hassling Cas about Sam’s unsettling behavior.

_ “Hey, you know every language, right?” Dean asked after taking a sip. _

_ “Yes.” _

_ “What the hell are these?” _

_ He held out his arm so that Cas could look, using his other hand to down the rest of his liquor. The angel’s expression stayed blank the whole time. _

_ “It’s Enochian.” _

_ “Are you serious, man?” _

_ “I am, yes. There are humans who speak this language, though they’re few and far between. Most often if you meet one it’s because they’re a Prophet.” _

_ “Fan-fuckin’-tastic. What do they say?” _

And after that Dean at least knows what he should be looking for… kinda. Because his words don’t make any fucking sense:  **CHANGE, FALL, MISUNDERSTAND.** It just figures, don’t it, that even knowing what they say he still doesn’t get what they’re trying to tell him.

His words still stay red, because whoever his person is ain’t gonna grow themselves a new soul or whatever. He rubs them with his fingertips when his leg is broken. He decides he hates them whenever he wakes up after a nightmare about Cas dissolving in the reservoir. When Bobby dies, Dean takes his combat knife and drags a deep line through each word to cross them out, because where the fuck is this soulless person? They’re supposed to fill in the missing spots in his life of whatever, so where are they at times like this when he’s really suffering? So fuck it, fuck them, fuck fate, fuck souls in general. He cuts future scars into his arm to strike through his word set and gives up on the whole idea.

And then he finds Cas again. And Cas doesn’t remember a damn thing. Dean wants to hate him, but it’s impossible. He’s still pissed that Cas hurt Sammy so bad, but hate? Somehow, that’s just not part of the equation.

_ “You’ve said your brother is ill, but I have a feeling you’re also wounded,” Cas-as-Emmanuel commented from the passenger seat. _

_ “It’s nothing,” Dean grunted after a second when he realized the amnesiac angel was talking about the gouged skin on his arm. “It ain’t important.” _

_ “Why not?” Cas-as-Emmanuel asked. “Do you… believe that you deserve to be in pain?” _

_ Dean wanted to lie, but he’d told so many of those already today just by not telling Cas the truth. “Yeah. Sometimes I think I do.” There’s no way he could’ve ever told anyone else that, but it wasn’t like Cas remembered anything anyway, so it didn’t matter. _

_ Cas-as-Emmanuel didn’t ask anymore questions, just reached over slowly to rest a hand on Dean’s forearm. And Dean got that warm-tingly-funny feeling he always got whenever Cas fixed him up, for the first time in a long time, and it was so familiar that it almost made him cry. _

So his words don’t stay struck through, even though he doesn’t hope for anything to come of them anymore anyway. And Dean tries not to think about them at all anymore, because it makes him too angry. How dare Cas fix them when he wanted them to go away.

And Dean stops wondering about them, about why they’re in Enochian and why they’re red… until the angels are booted out of Heaven and come tumbling ass over end down to earth. Because after that happens, when he’s in the bunker taking a shower and worrying about Cas and Sammy and all kinds of other shit, they’re suddenly not red anymore… they’re silver, like they’re supposed to be, like everyone else’s are. And it makes no fucking sense.

But it also doesn’t last long, because a few weeks later when Sam isn’t possessed anymore and Dean leaves to go off and be guilty and ashamed on his own, he’s rolling his sleeve back to see where the Mark of Cain was just burned into his skin and there beside it are his red fucking words again. Not like he’s been checking them lately or anything, because he was too busy trying to un-fuck Sam and cope with Cas being an angel again, so this was kinda the least of his problems. But now his words are back to being red. He almost wonders when that happened but decides he doesn’t give a fuck. They’ve never been normal before this anyway.

Did the Mark turn them red again? Did taking this hideous brand steal the soul of his person or something?

He turns into a greater demon, a Knight of Hell, and still his words are red but most of the time he forgets they exist at all. Sam drags him back to the bunker and puts him through a living hell trying to cure him. His head clears, and his blood stops burning, and Cas and Sammy watch him nervously as they let him out of the dungeon, and his words are still red.

After Charlie dies and Dean loses his shit, the Mark comes off with a spell from the Book of the Damned and the Darkness springs out of the ground, and Dean’s words are still red. Losing the Mark didn’t make them silver again no matter how much he hoped it would.

Amara forces him to connect to her against his will, but he already knows his words aren’t for her. None of them fit. She wants Dean but Dean doesn’t want her no matter how much she tries to make him. When God shows up and turns out to be Chuck of all fucking people, Dean tries to ask about his words, but any time he remembers to have that question there’s always something more important going on and he never gets the chance.

His mother comes back from the dead.

Mom doesn’t have words anymore, obviously. Her husband is dead. She doesn’t ask about Dean’s and Sam’s word sets until a lot later, after Asa Fox’s wake, and Sam explains pretty easily why he’s still single. Dean has a much harder time and doesn’t really answer, he derails the conversation instead by getting up for a beer refill and when he comes back they’re talking about something else.

Lucifer reappears, and the three of them rush off to find Cas. The whole thing is a shitshow, and Mom gets trapped with fucking satan over in the hellscape, and Cas…

They eventually manage to get Jack back to the god damn bunker despite some southern-fried greater demon giving them problems. And after hassling the antichrist for a couple minutes, Dean starts to get ready for bed, and. And. His words have stopped being red again. But this time, it’s because they’re just  _ gone. _

Dean refuses to put the pieces together, because that can’t be right. Angels don’t have souls, they’re not allowed to love humans, or something like that. So there’s no way his words point to Cas. It’s a coincidence. Except then Cas comes back again - somehow - and when they bring him home, Dean checks, and there they are, bright red.

He knows he should say something. But he doesn’t. Angels don’t have souls. Dean’s never seen Cas’ forearms, but he has no reason to believe there’s anything written there. Angels don’t love like people do. And yeah, maybe Cas is a lot closer to being human than most other angels, but he’s still distinctly  _ other _ enough to be recognizably not a person. So Dean says nothing, because there’s no point.

Even if there was a point, their lives are too fucking busy to be worrying about that anyway, especially after Jack gets sucked away into another world and they have to get everything pulled together to go rescue him and Mom. And then another shock when the least-malicious yet somehow at the same time biggest-pain-in-the-fucking-ass archangel Gabriel turns out to be still alive, apparently, which is its own project. And then apocalypse-world, and Lucifer, and… and then Dean loses agency over himself to alt-Michael.

The first time, he’s always fighting and struggling even though it doesn’t do any good. The second time, he gets dropped into a happy illusion, where Pamela didn’t get killed and he has a nice out of the way bar and his words were never there to begin with so they can’t cause him any confusion or distress. Then Cas and Sammy show up and pop his little bubble, and he manages to keep Michael trapped for awhile, and that costs him so much energy that he still never even considers going against his past choice to not tell Cas.

Then Jack loses his soul, and Mom dies, and Chuck comes back to torment them all, and Dean still hasn’t told Cas. But now Cas left because Dean was too angry with him about something that wasn’t even really his fault. Because that’s how it always fucking happens. It’s just a giant god damn mess. And it doesn’t get easier when Cas comes back home, not until they end up in fucking Purgatory again to look for a stupid flower. Dean loses Cas, and prays to him. He  _ almost _ says something about his words but decides not to. They find each other again, hug it out, go home to perform the spell and then totally blow it at the casino. But at least they don’t hate each other anymore.

They’re enemies with God. They make enemies with Death. Billie traps them in the dungeon, and they’re going to die.

Cas takes a page out of the Winchester playbook and dies saving Dean, summoning the Empty so that it’ll take Billie too. He tells Dean he loves him, grabbing Dean’s shoulder. He pushes Dean away so that Dean will live, and then Cas and Billie and the Empty are all gone. And Dean never got to find out for sure if Cas had words, too.

**Author's Note:**

> Fic Fun Facts:
> 
> 1\. I came up with this soulmark system all on my own a couple years ago for a different fandom, and I'm so proud of it that this is the third fic I've rolled it out for.  
> 2\. I read a post on Tumblr one time about how in fic when soulmates are indicated by words the writers always have it being in black lettering, which is super unfair to POC, so to make it work for everyone I chose gold and silver lettering because aro people are also totally a thing but they might have platonic soulmates sometimes, so hopefully I got everybody in there because fic is supposed to be fun even if it doesn't end well for the characters :)  
> 3\. I am an absolute fucking sucker for this trope and I initially thought this fic would end up being longer, but I'm still in the process of writing [Feathers](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29372334) so this seemed like an idea I could just whip up in a few hours, which is exactly what happened.
> 
> My other SPN fics can be found [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works?utf8=%E2%9C%93&commit=Sort+and+Filter&work_search%5Bsort_column%5D=revised_at&include_work_search%5Bfandom_ids%5D%5B%5D=27&work_search%5Bother_tag_names%5D=&work_search%5Bexcluded_tag_names%5D=&work_search%5Bcrossover%5D=&work_search%5Bcomplete%5D=&work_search%5Bwords_from%5D=&work_search%5Bwords_to%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_from%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_to%5D=&work_search%5Bquery%5D=&work_search%5Blanguage_id%5D=&user_id=Aaron_The_8th_Demon).
> 
> Comments welcome and appreciated.


End file.
